MY STORY
I first saw and admired rustic furniture as a boy in the Adirondack Mountains, where my family has camped for generations. My earliest pieces were made at the family camp on Union Falls Pond.
While studying wood design and carving at Alfred University's School of Art and Design, I began to develop my signature natural form pedestal table. It showcases various pedestal forms: split wood, round branch, twisted trunk, crotch, or "square tree."
In my lifetime spent in the woods, I have begun to see trees as living sculptures. I love the natural design and graceful curves of twisted branches and roots, as well as the amazing grain and color of impeccably finished interior wood.
Many of the most beautiful trees are considered defective by foresters and the lumber industry: trees that are partly hollow, twisted, forked close to the ground, curved, or full of knots. Such material would be impossible to use in conventional furniture building, but suits my work perfectly.
To me, the extra labor and time spent shaping and joining this "character wood" is well worth it. The life history of a tree - fire, drought, weather, injury, disease - is recorded in the wood.
I enjoy the challenge of working with seldom used materials such as eastern red cedar, "muscle wood," split wood, and burls. I particularly relish working with large, single-board slabs of redwood burl and other very wide boards.
Much of my stock comes from my own carefully managed forest here in western New York. I make my furniture directly from the forest, cutting the trees, slicing them into boards on a 40" Amish-built band saw, drying the boards in my own solar wood kiln, and finally putting it all together into a piece of furniture.
Much of my inspiration and design ideas result from many hours spent working in my woods. Other wood is obtained from the Adirondacks, New Hampshire, and specialty wood dealers. I'm always searching for that perfect and unique piece of wood.
As a rustic furniture builder, I like to continually challenge myself with different woods and new and unique designs. I think of my work as fine art, each piece a studio furniture sculpture built to last many lifetimes.
In the role of artist as well as craftsman, I strive to honor the beauty of nature's design, the spirit of the whole, living tree, and the story it has to tell.
Like the trees, no two pieces of Natural Form Furniture are ever the same.
MEMBER:
Northeast Woodworkers Association
International Sculpture Center